A U.N. investigator has just reported that extreme sexual violence against women is still rampant and pervasive in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
I think that it is a part of human nature, an instinct, to want to turn away from such atrocities when we hear of them, because they are so awful and because we feel so powerless to help. I know that it is my knee-jerk reaction, and when I read about such large-scale epidemics, I want to find something else to write about. Something simpler. And that is precisely why I force myself to pass along this kind of information. I once heard Oprah (yes, I know, Oprah) say something that stuck with me: when it comes to these kinds of horrors, we all like to say that “we didn’t know.” But once you do know, you no longer have an excuse. You can’t un-know.
A warning: the below quote is not for the faint of heart.
Erturk, special rapporteur for the United Nations Human Rights Council on violence against women, said the situation in South Kivu province, where rebels from neighboring Rwanda operate, was the worst she had ever encountered.
The atrocities perpetrated there by armed groups, some of whom seemed to have been involved in the 1994 Rwandan massacres in which 800,000 people were killed, “are of an unimaginable brutality that goes far beyond rape,” she said.
“Women are gang raped, often in front of their families and communities. In numerous cases, male relatives are forced at gun point to rape their own daughters, mothers or sisters,” she said.
After rape, many women were shot or stabbed in the genital area, and survivors told Erturk that while held as slaves by the gangs they had been forced to eat excrement or the flesh of their murdered relatives.
Widespread sexual abuse in the various conflicts racking the republic — which last year held elections hailed as marking a new era — “seems to have become a generalized aspect of the overall oppression of women,” Erturk said.
And of course, like with Darfur, the larger question that looms is why we allow this to continue.
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i was not prepared to read that.
Sadly, I have read such reports before – and for far too long.
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